The nominations for the 90th annual Academy Awards have been announced.
Guillermo del Toro's
"The Shape of Water" leads with 13 nominations, including Best Picture, Director, Original Screenplay, Actress and Supporting Actor. It's followed by
"Dunkirk" with 8 nods,
"Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri" with 7, and finally
"Phantom Thread" and
"Darkest Hour" tied with 6 nominations each.
This year the Academy continutes to honor its tradition of snubs and surprises. Honestly, more snubs than surprises. One of the biggest surprises, for me at least, is that
"Logan" managed to nab a nomination for Adapted Screenplay. That's a pretty major win for comic book movies, but not only that, it's a powerful signal that studios should take more risks with the genre.
It's nice to see that
"Baby Driver" wasn't ignored, nabbing three nods for Best Sound, Sound Mixing and Film Editing. That's pretty much what I expected, but with the Oscars you can never be sure.
For many, the big surprise was that
"Phantom Thread" scored six nods, including Best Picture and Director. Pundits were pretty sure that the film came in too late in the race and hadn't gained much traction. Of course, they underestimated the power of a film starring
Daniel Day-Lewis.
"Mudbound", a highly acclaimed, but not particularly popular Netflix movie about racism in post-World War II America, also pulled off a big surprise, claiming four nominations for Supporting Actress (
Mary J. Blige), Adapted Screenplay, Original Song and Cinematography (
Rachel Morrison became the first woman ever nominated in this category).
In the smaller surprises category we have
Christopher Plummer nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his last-minute performance in
"All the Money in the World". At 88 years old, the veteran actor is officially the oldest nominee in this category ever. Also,
"The Big Sick", largely ignored at awards this year, managed to score a nod for Best Original Screenplay.
Now on to the snubs. Where to begin.
James Franco missed out on a Best Actor nomination for
"The Disaster Artist", possibly due to allegations of sexual misconduct that popped up recently, and his place was taken by
Denzel Washington for the much less popular and overall poorly reviewed
"Roman J. Israel, Esq.". And the second snub in the same category goes to
Tom Hanks for
"The Post". It seems that in recent years Hanks has lost favor with the Academy, who also snubbed him in 2014 for his role in
"Captain Phillips". Meanwhile
"The Post" itself was pretty much ignored, except for two nominations for Best Picture and Best Actress (
Meryl Streep). The Academy just can't get enough of Streep.
While
"Blade Runner 2049" wasn't completely left out as evidenced by its five nominations in technical categories (Cinematography, Sound Editing, Mixing, Production Design and Visual Effects), it was snubbed for Best Picture and Director (
Denis Villeneuve). It's not entirely surprising, since the Academy doesn't favor science fiction, with few minor exceptions.
Other Best Picture snubs include
"The Florida Project",
"The Big Sick" and
"I, Tonya".
"Call Me By Your Name" received four nominations (Best Picture, Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Original Song), but
Armie Hammer missed out on a Supporting Actor nod.
Once again, the Academy fumbled in the Animation and Documentary categories. For Best Animated Feature, we find questionable nominees like
"Ferdinand" and
"The Boss Baby", while
"The LEGO Batman Movie" is absent. It's worth noting that the Academy also snubbed
"The LEGO Movie" three years ago. Maybe the voters' kids just hate LEGO. In the Best Documentary Feature category, they somehow managed to snub two of the year's highly acclaimed documentaries:
"City of Ghosts" and
"Jane".
The winners of the 90th Oscars with be announced live on ABC on March 4th.
Jimmy Kimmel will return to host the show.
